By every measure, one of the most serious issues that gnaw seriously in the minds of every Nigerian presently is how to ensure a free, fair and credible leadership recruitment process. This agitation has been given added fillip to the grand parody the 2003 and 2007 elections was impudently turned into by the former regime in its wish for unbridled power. The fallout of the sham conduct of the 2007 elections that turned out the best instance of fraudulent electoral conduct human society has known, still reverberates in all the nooks and crannies of the country. The obvious attempt to manage the negative outcome and somehow mitigate such atrocious crime in the future must have stemmed the present regime’s decision to empanel a committee on electoral reform to see ways of stemming the rising state of malcontent that marked the deliberate decision of the former regime, in cahoots with its horses and dogs, to invest the electoral process with such howling scam for their selfish and self-serving purposes. That Nigeria, as a country survived that brazen debauchery is because the country itself is organized as a fraud-writ-large and the prebendal urge to prey on each other has made Nigerians to swallow vicious crimes against them with the hope of employing such foul tactics for their own personal advantage in the future.
With restiveness boiling to an intolerable level and with sentiments gauged against continued degradation of the electoral process to favor base instincts of a few, it is arguable if Nigeria will survive another heinous rape of the electoral process, as was seen in April 2007 and it is debatable if democracy, even in the most dysfunctional manner we have seen in Nigeria since 1999, will outlive another macabre rape of the process. It is too tall to expect that election riggers who look up to time and their guile to buy them reprieve from the malcontent of the citizenry will come to brace up to the need to change their attitudes to elections. The horrible attitude of the present Yar’Adua government to the conduct of the same body of racketeers that were behind the April 2007 sham, shows Nigerians that election riggers and those that benefit from it find the taste of their stolen apple too relishing to give up.
To help the country navigate from the shameful history of consistent and worsening electoral manipulation, which had made it the butt of ribaldry of rouge governments like Zimbabwe, Nigerians must brace up to fight a battle of their lives and in this battle, all weapons must be employed and all tactics put in play. All hands must be on deck and no enemies must be spared otherwise in thinking that somehow, we must find a way of going away with the next electoral robbery, as is the thinking of the Yar’Adua government presently, the country is being placed on a landmine that will soon explode and take all of us with it.
To start with, I don’t think much of the intention of the Yar’Adua government to reform the electoral process. Although he had empanelled a body, with a sprinkle of some credible personages, he and his government have showed disturbing streaks of abhorrence towards reforming the rouge system that brought them about. He had been content leading an unrepentant cartel of electoral thieves and vote robbers called the PDP in their undying wish for totalitarian power, even when such acquisitive tendency is not supported by Nigerians that are being choked in their vice grip. In all his conducts and actions so far, he had shown that he is not impervious to sustaining the rotten vessel that brought him forth. And with this mindset, it would be really difficult in real terms to reform the present putrid electoral process, managed by men that flower on debased moral rectitude, who can do anything to sustain their means of illicit livelihood.
For Nigerians to make good impact on its electoral conduct, I want to recommend some of these measures as viable means to file out the manifest imperfections that have defaced electoral conduct in Nigeria and made it a laughing stock in the comity of nations.
• A six-months period between the conduct of elections and swearing in of elected officers should be provided for so as to ensure that all litigations are disposed of before swearing in of officers.
• A pro-active electoral adjudication process must be put in place to ensure quick and expeditious dispensation of cases of electoral contest before swearing in of elected officers.
• An open ballot system where results are announced at the polling center and signed by all parties and observers is a sine-qua-non for a free and fair election in Nigeria.
• All incumbents desirous of re-election must resign from their offices at least three months before elections so as to remove the present situation where all instruments, resources and agencies of state are employed by incumbents to prosecute their electoral interests or those of their cronies.
• Non-partisan officers of the state such as chief judges or credible citizens of the various constituencies should be sworn in to complete the tenures of incumbents that desire re-election.
• Constitution of electoral bodies must be from the respective political interests, on equal levels and the chairmen should be non-partisan stakeholders who must be nominated based on the agreement of every stakeholder in a given constituency.
• Election monitors must be made an important integral part of the country’s electoral process.
• Credible Nigerian monitors, drawn from reputable civil society groups, religious bodies, foreign monitoring groups, executive operatives of corporate bodies, etc. should be given accreditation as monitors with the added and important responsibility of certifying the freeness and fairness of elections in all the polling centers in the country. The electoral body is bound to approve or reject results from the polling booths based on the certification of the monitors.
• The use of the police, army, and other forms of security agencies by parties and private politicians during elections must be made a criminal offence and anybody found to have violated this stands to be jailed.
• Proven cases of electoral misdemeanor should be punishable with the beneficiary made to forfeit his electoral mandate and banned from further participation in the process. Where the members or operatives of the electoral body are found guilty of perpetrating electoral fraud, such a person must be jailed.
• Beneficiaries of electoral fraud must be made to forfeit their mandates to the challenger in the situation the challenger is free from electoral misconduct.
I don’t believe that the suggestions on how to improve on the conduct of elections in Nigeria are exhausted by the views I have itemized here. I know that maybe, some other people have in different forms and contexts, advanced these views to the panel and anybody desirous of walking away from the present electoral quagmire decreed by unscrupulous power mongers. I only wanted to highlight these important suggestions with a view that it would help the current panel to make its contribution toward freeing the country from this ennui. I certainly know it will help a tremendous deal in moving the country forward on the paths of electoral sanity. Above all it will give the Nigerian people, long stranded in a joyless electoral limbo some cause to hope that things are not irredeemably lost.
